I dealt with her honestly, telling her that I was lowland bred and born and would be moving on before the seasons turned. Still, there was comfort to be given and taken. She told me flatly the first night I stayed with her that she hoped to get a child with me, as she was seeking a new husband at Midsummer Meeting, and, as in many places, a woman’s fertility was a far more attractive quality than her chastity.
It was she who invited me to accompany her to Midsummer Meeting; she wished to show off her current bedmate to her prospective suitors, much as a farmer would show the bull when selling the calf. I had long since outlived false pride, and so I was happy to say I would go with her.
“I only hope Moonwoman doesn’t take against me,” Meramay told me matter-of-factly. “She doesn’t like a light-haired girl, and no man’s going to cross her.”
“You might darken your hair,” I said casually, though my heart was beating fast; this was the first time anyone had spoken of Moonwoman directly to me. “The herbs are easy to find, after all.”
Meramay shook her head decisively. “That’d be the same as lying, and they say she hates a liar worse than death and poison. She can see right into a body’s heart, too.”
There was no changing Meramay’s mind, though I did wonder why, if she feared Moonwoman so much, why she was taking the risk of bringing an outsider to Midsummer Meeting. She did take the precaution of tying up her hair in a brightly colored scarf before we set out; apparently simply hiding her hair didn’t count as lying.
And so we began.
Meramay carried a pack heavier than my own, and traveled, besides, with a cart drawn by one of the enormous brown-and-black dogs which are the usual beasts of burden in these hills, pulling carts and sometimes carrying packs themselves.
It took us three days to reach the place where Midsummer Meeting was to be held, but I had long since decided for myself that everything in the Armor Hills was three days’ walk from everything else, most of it spent climbing one side of a hill and falling down the other. As we walked, I did my best to gain more information from Meramay about the mysterious Moonwoman.
Meramay said she had been here “for always,” but Moonwoman had not been at last year’s Midsummer Meeting, nor had word reached Haven of her before the spring, so I did not think that could be so. I was growing increasingly uneasy with what I heard of her; Meramay had never seen her, but she certainly feared her.
On the third day, just as we reached the meeting grounds, I found out why.
“Was her took my man,” Meramay said, as simply as if she were remarking on the fine summer weather, or the flowers growing by the side of the trace. “Saw him out walking of an evening and followed him home. Then she Sang him out of my bed, will-he, nill-he, and that was that.”
This was the first time anyone had mentioned music in connection wit the witch I was seeking. Did Moonwoman have Bardic Gifts? No proper Bard would use his or her powers so; I was not even certain that Bardic Empathy could so thoroughly compel someone against their will, certainly not the Gift of an untrained Bard.
I would have questioned Meramay further, though it was a chancy thing to do, save for the fact that we had arrived at Meeting Home.
It was the closest thing to a proper town that I had yet seen in the Armor Hills, though it must lie deserted most of the year. There were dance floors, open to the air; platforms of raised wood planks, where even now groups of dancers whirled, stamped, and spun to the sounds of drums and dulcimers, and even a few roofs without walls, where groups of hill women clustered together, talking and sewing and keeping a weather eye on the youngest children. Meeting Home filled an entire valley, and its floor was surely the largest flat space I’d seen since I’d arrived here. At one end of the valley there were a row of hearths, a great openair kitchen flanked by tables enough to fill the dining hall at the Herald’s Collegium.
I wondered, then, why I should think of that, for memories of the Collegium belonged to a life I had long since left behind me. They had nothing to do with the life Paynim the Tinker led.
Though the Meeting did not properly begin until the following night, the whole of the valley was already filled with bright clothes and bright colors, the sounds of music, and the smells of good cooking. There were more people here than I had seen so far in my entire visit to the Hills, and Meramay assured me that more would arrive before the Meeting Days began tomorrow night with the acknowledgment of the new children born in the past year. As I followed Meramay across the meadow to help her unload her cart, I saw unharnessed cart dogs lying everywhere, basking in the sunlight.
With Meramay to make my introductions, I was welcomed without trouble, and set myself up near those who had brought things to trade. I soon had as much work as I could fairly handle. Not much of my payment was in coin; there was little way I would be able to carry the bulkiest of the goods away with me, but I might well be able to trade them for smaller and more portable items—or for more costly things that I could fairly use, such as a new shirt, a hat, or a pair of breeches.
More people arrived as the day waned, and that night there was a feast the like of which I had rarely experienced, followed by dancing that would go on, I was assured, until dawn.
The dances of the Armor Hills are complicated ones, and after stumbling through a few sets, I excused myself and sat with those who were—to hear them tell it—older and wiser. When the ale jugs began to pass, I began to hear more of the Moonwoman.
Half of what I heard I discounted immediately, for not even the sorcerers of Karse and Iftel could do such things as were claimed for Moonwoman—or if they could do one, they surely could not do the whole.
Thus, I did not think she could truly turn men into wolves and women into deer, nor ride the wind invisibly, nor strike people dead with a touch. If she could do even a tenth of what was claimed of her, she would have been a greater Mage than Vanyel the Good, and I thought that unlikely.
What was plain to hear, however, was that the people of the Armor Hills feared her greatly, and would not cross her, though she took not only goods from their houses, but young men as well, none of whom had ever been seen again. I heard, further, that she was never seen beneath the light of the sun, which only increased the awe in which she was held.
The awe . . . and the fear.
It was fear, perhaps, that had kept them from petitioning for a Herald’s services before now. In truth, I did not know. I heard as much admiration of Moonwoman as I did anything else, though only a fool would think he would hear honest and open criticism of one whom they felt wielded such power. Such reticence was, in fact, one of the very reasons I walked the roads, for awe and fear are close cousins, and neither is the sister of truth. It was plain that I had much to report to Alberich, but I could not leave just yet. I would have no good reason to give for my sudden departure.
Besides, I had not yet seen the woman, and there is a saying in the taverns along the Exile’s Road that truth is to tale as the worm to the fish: one may easily be swallowed up by the other.
On the first day of the Meeting, disaster struck, though at first Meramay and I both thought it to be a blessing. Several of the families that arrived brought strangers with them. In each case, the story was the same: they had been found wandering nearby, with no memory of who they were or how they had come to be where they were. The families that had found them led them around to those who cooked and those who traded, for these were usually the elder men and women of their households, and might have the best chance of naming them.